New member here

[egress123]

Hello all. A new member here.

Thanks for helping me out with my NexStar 8SE during the fall star party! I was the clueless one that bothered everyone there.

Is there an orientation for the new member every year? Or do we use the beginner's classes as the new member orientation meeting?

Thanks!

[SEmert]

Hi Egress123,

We hold three orientation sessions per year, in the January, May and September timeframe. We just had our last one in early September. A few weeks before the next scheduled one, I post it on the forums and send an email to the new members to let them know about it.

You can ask anything about the club at the B-SIG meetings, although their main objective is to get you started in the hobby of astronomy, as opposed to the orientation sessions which give you a good idea of the facilities and benefits available to you as a member. For example, generally the January B-SIG meeting covers "telescopes 101" - an introduction to the types of scopes, outlining the characteristics of each type of scope; refractor, reflector, cassegrain. February generally covers accessories - eyepieces, finders, and the other stuff necessary to have a successful observing session. And it goes on from there.

By the way, since the MAS is mostly a face-to-face organization, but one where we use the web site and the forums and emails for communications as well as the meetings and star parties, we encourage our members to use actual names either as their forum IDs, or at least put their real name in their signature so we can get acquainted.

Steve Emert
membership coordinator

[egress123]

thanks for the info.

I guess changing my ID is not an option. I tried to do that from my control panel but it did not have option to change the ID.
I'll include my info in the signature section.

thanks.